The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay Read online

  “Do you carry your own heart, also?”

  “Yes. They’re in the pockets of this jacket, right now.” He glanced down, and patted them.

  “Not in one pocket together?”

  “No, because they jiggle together and clank and people ask what’s making the noise, and then I have to lie. I’m not great at lying, though I think I might have to work at getting better.”

  She didn’t ask what he meant by that, because that would’ve been in breach of the rules. Flirting was allowable as long as it wasn’t allowed to become concrete. They could play at being on the brink of adultery. Both of them knew it was only a game.

  “Can I have your one back?” she asked him. “The one you gave me?”

  “Here you go.” He put the glass heart on the table.

  “What’s this? You’ve had this fitting added.” A twisted gold coil was clamped into one end, in the space at the top where it divided.

  “It’s in case you wanted to use it as jewelry,” he said, producing a small velvet box. “There’s a fine gold chain in there. An early birthday present.”

  Nina threaded it through and put it on, but couldn’t get the fastening to work, so Luca leaned across and did it for her, his face close to her ear. She could feel his breath on her neck.

  On Nina’s birthday she and Paolo had people over for dinner. Francesca spotted immediately, as Nina took the flowers and the waxed-paper packet of cheese, that she was wearing the glass heart as a pendant. Her eye went to it and it kept returning. She noted how much of the evening was taken up by Luca and Nina talking exclusively to one another, how often their eyes met, how Nina’s eyes went straight to Luca’s if anything was funny or extraordinary, or if someone was wrong or dull, sharing their recognition of wrongness and dullness. She saw that Nina and Luca came into physical contact a lot; the rough play of their childhood friendship continued, and there was poking in the ribs and shoving. When Nina complained that the cheese he’d brought was so overripe that it had achieved consciousness, Luca picked her up and put her into the larder and leaned against the door until she apologized. It had been like this always. At Luca’s wedding he’d taken joking exception to her tease about the cut of his suit, its big lapels, and what she called his mafia shoes, gleeful about her own daring. He’d lifted her up and put her over his shoulder; he’d taken her out of the tent, long and skinny in her honey-colored bridesmaid dress, and dumped her on the already dewy lawn. She’d come back into the gathering bearing wet patches across her back, her pale hair falling out of its complicated bun, and she’d stood with her hands on her hips and said, “Right, Luca Romano.” Everyone around had seen the potential of the thing to descend into pranks, and how inappropriate that would be.

  “Only kidding,” Nina assured the friends who had gathered to urge calm. She’d been taken off to a table, led by two hands holding hers, the hands of two kind friends, and she’d been put into a chair and plied with booze.

  “No more, no more,” Luca had said at the same time, putting his hands up as his father approached. He’d gone to his new wife, and had waltzed her around the room, and then they’d toured it together hand in hand, making sure to have proper conversations with people, and all had been well.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Dr. Christos came into the room to show Nina a copy of the island newsletter, a stapled booklet that featured the accident as front-page news.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “They have my picture. My passport photograph.”

  “I didn’t think you’d mind. It’s funny. You don’t think it’s funny?”

  “Hilarious. I’m sure it’ll all seem hilarious eventually. So what does the headline say — is it about my being stupid?”

  “It says, ‘the woman who almost killed seven islanders.’ Look at your face. I’m kidding.”

  “Kidding but not really kidding.”

  He began to translate the report into English for her, and it turned out it was purely factual, merely a blow-by-blow account of what had occurred. When he’d finished he handed the newsletter over. “Keep it. Souvenir.”

  Two other photographs showed the scene of the accident and the damage to the minibus. “What does it really say, the headline?”

  “ ‘The English Tourist Whose Leg Was Broken.’ That’s good, isn’t it? That’s passive; you were a victim of circumstance as much as anyone.”

  “Not really. I was the one standing in the middle of the road.”

  “Nobody sees it that way. Well — maybe one or two zealots. Maybe just the seven people on the bus, and their families and friends. Wait, that’s the whole island. Maybe we need to organize an armed guard.”

  He smiled to himself at the wit of his own remark, and settled to work, getting his laptop out and his spectacle case and consulting his notes over the top of reading glasses, their frames as dark as his eyebrows. Nina needed something to do, so she pulled the wheeled table into position across the bed and wrote to her father. She’d made light of the accident — and of her depression — on the phone, and he’d chastised her for that, so now she began to write a slightly less jokey account. Dr. Christos went out and came back with a breakfast tray — it was still only 8:30 a.m. — one that featured a flesh-pink ceramic bowl of hard-boiled white eggs. Nina took one and cracked it against the table edge, and began a slow peel, imprinting in memory the impact of her browned hands on the eggshell, the tiny suction noises of its loosening. When she’d cut it lengthways in half she picked up her camera, always beside her, and took a photograph.

  Dr. Christos was watching. “You’re still getting it, the survivor’s euphoria,” he said. “I’ve had people photographing their breakfast before. The boy last year, for instance; the boy whose back wasn’t broken after all.”

  “Christ, what happened to him?”

  “Tombstoning, he said they call it. Jumping off high rocks into shallow water. The most stupid idea of fun imaginable.”

  “A peeled egg. I know it sounds mad, but there are things I want to remember, to associate.”

  “You were never in any danger, though, not really; not once we knew it was just your leg, just a little concussion.”

  “It didn’t feel so straightforward at the time. Have you ever thought you were going to die?”

  “No. I haven’t even been in hospital, not as a patient. Probably it’ll all happen at once. I’m sure my appendix, gallbladder, and prostate are just getting their ducks in a row.”

  She smiled at him. She liked his company. “Well, not to overdramatize, but it felt like it was the end. Everything happening in extreme slow motion. The bus tilting and going over, and goats looking down at me from the slope. My vision going black at the edges — the window was getting smaller as if I was going blind. But I wasn’t afraid. It was bizarrely ordinary. I thought, ‘Oh well, it’s goodbye to the world, and it’s a pity because I really want to live.’ ”

  “That’s a good thought to have.”

  “When I woke up the ambulanceman was lifting me at the shoulder, the driver was at my feet, and another man was looking down at me. Andros. His big, fearful bear face.”

  “He’s a good man. He went in the ambulance with you.”

  “I grabbed hold of his wrist, did he tell you?”

  “He told me.”

  “In the ambulance — I thought I was dying so I drank it all up. I wanted to take it all in, everything I could still see, all the last things.”

  “What last things?”

  “Just things we saw on the way. The beauty was overwhelming, the colors, the soft summer dark. There was a blue door with an angel’s head knocker, pots of flowers, red and orange, lit windows, people walking along who had all the time in the world. Big teenage boys on small bikes. The lights of the car flashing off a big white house, one with columns and wide steps. A cat was stretched out on one of the steps, a black and white cat, and it raised its head to look at us as we went by. Apparently I was talking to Paolo. I thought my husband was in the ambulance.”r />
  “What were you saying to him?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “People say all sorts of things in the back of the ambulance.”

  “It’s strange how some details stick and some don’t. I don’t remember the cup of green tea I drank before I went to sleep at the other hospital, no memory of that at all, though the cup was there in the morning. But I do remember the smell coming through the open window of my room: stale seawater and tanning oils. I remember looking out of the window and seeing towels hanging over balconies.”

  “The hospital’s surrounded by blocks of apartments. Holiday apartments, most of them.”

  Even though they were acutely short of beds at Main Island Hospital, there’d been resistance to sending Nina back across the water and into Dr. Christos’s care. It was all down to health politics, he told her. Over there they had to cope with a shoddily built, tired facility, and were irritated in the extreme by the money that had flowed in from the European Union for Small Island, replacing the first-aid station, converted from a boathouse, that had been in place for the previous twenty years. Before that they’d made do with the home of the island doctor, who’d been sensible enough to marry the island nurse, and people had given birth in the family house, on their dining table. The boathouse had been equipped with a defibrillator, a well-stocked pharmacy, and a side room with gas and air for pain relief in labor, and most of the residents of Main Island judged that to be more than enough for their neighbors.

  “Now that money is in such short supply, their point about our sucking up their funding is becoming less good-humored,” Dr. Christos said. “And we have trouble defending ourselves sometimes, when the only business going through here in an average week is about stitching cut feet, and dealing with sunstroke and jellyfish stings.”

  “So you’re quite glad of my concussion.”

  “Thrilled. Only disappointed that more people on the bus weren’t hurt.” He held his hands up. “Joke. But they might actually shut us down. We might have to go to Michael Ithika again.”

  “Michael who?”

  “Michael Ithika. I was going to be surprised you hadn’t heard of him, but then why would you? He’s our homegrown Internet millionaire. He has a weekend house here, his own compound hidden away on the other side. You wouldn’t know it even existed unless you saw it from the air.”

  “Is it his helicopter that I’ve seen coming and going?”

  “It is. He lets us use it for emergencies, as long as we clean up the blood. He put up half the money for the hospital and was influential in helping get the rest.”

  “How wonderful, to be able to be a philanthropist.” The doctor had an odd reaction to this. He drew himself more upright in the chair, and seemed almost to shudder. “You don’t like him?”

  “Do I like him? Well, I admire his focus. He’s been unfailingly generous to us.”

  “But? I sense a but.”

  “Everything’s always come easy to Michael. I hear myself saying that and know that I’m basically jealous … though not because of the playboy lifestyle. He has a good life, genuinely enjoys his empire and does what he wants. He’s distressingly at odds with the conventional idea of the miserable rich person.”

  “He’s a playboy?”

  “Oh yes. Yes, indeed. I don’t like the way he treats women, to be honest.”

  “How does he treat women?”

  “As an endlessly replenishing supply. The guy needs to go out with an American and have his consciousness raised, stat.”

  Nina felt a wave of admiration. “Sounds like it.”

  “But I feel bad dissing him, because he’s got a social conscience and he uses it well.”

  “Were you at school together?”

  “God, no. He’s not even thirty.”

  “Ah. One of those.”

  “There are people here who loop the two of us together, Michael and me. The people here: they get married as soon as it’s legal and then they stick, no matter what. There’s still a stigma about divorce. Divorced men act like widowers.”

  “Why would they loop the two of you together?”

  “Just because I’ve had relationships since my marriage ended. But things that look the same aren’t always the same.”

  “That’s true.” His marriage had ended. But she mustn’t conclude anything from that. Or invest anything in it.

  He dipped his head and rubbed at the back of it, at the hairline, his neck and scalp. Paolo had often done the same when he was weary. “I’m tired today. I didn’t get home till two a.m. and was called in again at six. I get rather low when I’m this knackered. Knackered. I like that word; it’s a good London word.” He lay back as if to sleep, shuffling lower so that his head rested on the back of the chair, and folded his arms over the belt of his jeans. A cowboy belt, she noticed, with a big brass buckle. “Tell me a story. Tell me about Nina when she was a child.”

  “Only if you agree to take your turn.”

  “Deal. Give me Nina at twelve and Nina at eighteen.”

  “Nina at twelve … was bony and timid. She had waist-length hair always worn in a plait. She never wore skirts if she could help it.”

  “A timid tomboy. I like tomboys. Did you climb trees?”

  “Timid with strangers and at school but not with my friends. There was, yes, a lot of tree-climbing, haystack-climbing, stream-damming, getting dirty and wet. A lot of playing with the boys next door.”

  “Who were the boys next door? What happened to them?”

  “My husband, my brother-in-law.”

  “Oh, I see, I see. Right. Carry on.” His eyes were open now.

  “There was a lot of bicycle-riding. Between the ages of seven and twelve, I was on a bike most of the time. I was part of a gang — don’t look like that, it was all completely innocent. We played in the street; the village was quiet then. There was a lot of reading — my dad was constantly buying me books — but I watched television when I came home from school until teatime, like everyone else, and did my homework afterwards. The TV wasn’t often on when Dad was in the house; he didn’t approve. Are you sure you want to hear all this? I ate a lot of sweets; sweets were a big thing back then. And board games — board games were a big thing. We’d have whole-day bouts of Monopoly. What else … I always wanted a cat but I was allergic. Eczema, asthma, sensitive. I was quite serious, I think, like my dad, though my mother jollied me out of it. I played the flute, though not very well.”

  “I liked that. Okay. Okay, my turn. Let’s see. No flutes, no tennis, no TV. Bike-riding yes, and running wild — I can relate to that — but the books were few and mostly borrowed. We were poor. I had to work on the farm after school and on weekends. Had to go to church, too, but that was normal; everybody did. This place was one big family then, and not only in its ideas; I mean literally. We’re all related somehow or other, though there were always two factions, the two villages. And then things changed. I was good at chess and was sent to the adult tournament and won it. School realized I was an adept student and treated me differently. They found opportunities for me. I worked hard and went off the island.”

  “I was always terrible at chess, though my dad tried. Wrong kind of brain.”

  “Yes, your parents. Tell me.” He shuffled down a little more, crossing his legs at the ankles.

  “Loving in different ways. My dad, Robert, was an academic at the university, a history lecturer.”

  “Was he what he’d always wanted to be? Describe, please.” He closed his eyes again.

  “He was. His ambitions were fulfilled. He’s tall, strong-featured, has brown and gray hair in a radical side parting; 1960s hair, my mum used to say. Gray eyes, and not quick to smile. He’s from the Western Isles and has an island accent. My mother’s dead but he’s still alive. She was a housewife. A homemaker, as Dad always introduced her to people. She was good at making a home. A happy person, the most energetic I ever met, and public-spirited; she kept an eye on the old people and got their shoppi
ng. The whole village came to her funeral. She wanted to have a homewares import business but it never happened. When she was young she’d wanted to be an artist. Or an actress. Both impossibilities, though.”

  “Why so?” He opened one eye.

  “Because of the family in Norway. Orthodox Lutherans, I suppose. Fairly orthodox. At any rate, no showing off was allowed. She was all set to be a primary school teacher when she met my dad.”

  “So, Nina at eighteen.”

  “At eighteen I was at university. Things changed then, as they do, and I didn’t see much of her, but up till then Mum and I were very close. We liked to do the same kinds of things. I didn’t have anyone else I could dress-make with, or who liked baking and photography and drawing. Even at university, it took me a while to make friends. Everyone around me was getting into booze and decadence and it wasn’t really my thing. I shocked people by wanting to work hard.”

  “You were a nerdy wallflower. Gotcha.”

  “Pretty much. Shy. Useless at talking to boys.”

  “Other than the husband and the brother-in-law.”

  “Things had become complicated, though, on that front. It didn’t seem possible to be friends with both any longer. Not at the same time.”

  “I bet.” Dr. Christos was frowning at his phone.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “It’s my daughter in Athens. Will you excuse me? I think I should call her.”

  “Of course, of course. Go speak to her.”

  He made as if to go out of the room, but paused at the doorway. “Nina, will you have dinner with me before you go home?”

  “Oh — I’d love to,” she said. “Thank you very much; that would be lovely. What a treat.” The politeness was perhaps overdone.

  “There’s a new restaurant over the water; it’s outdoors in a cove on the western side, and they have great sunsets. I’d love to take you. We can talk about your moving here and make a plan.”

  She’d told him the previous evening that she wanted to live abroad for a year and was thinking seriously about Greece. He’d become excited; he’d pulled up a chair.